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Redd Rosethread
}}Perpetually on the move, Redd Rosethread answers to no one but her own needs and desires. She goes where she pleases, takes whatever she wants, and rarely bothers trying to build relationships beyond whatever supplies immediate benefit. Being mostly elven and tending to avoid "fellow" elves on account of her tiefling heritage, she mostly associates with people who are much less long-lived than she is. But in Redd's mind, there isn't any point in getting overly attached to something she'll lose in the end. It's better to live on her own terms and not have to worry about anything else. Appearance Small even for an elf, Redd's short stature makes her perfectly suited for the kind of "employment" she's given herself. She's light on her feet and is adept at hiding her most unusual features, also more than able to effectively lie about the ones that are hard to hide. She usually changes her outfits and hairstyle to fit in wherever she happens to be, though she tends to favor muted colors when able and generally doesn't like wearing anything too attention-drawing or brightly colored even when that's the local fashion. Her reddish hair can easily be best described as "like a lion's mane" when it isn't tucked into something or tied back. Being a little self-conscious about this and preferring not to "waste" hairstyles that could be used for a disguise later, Redd opts to keep her hat on in most cases. Redd's tiefling features manifest most prominently in her red eyes and reddish skin, which she claims is just because she's natively from Bronnwyr and thus spent a lot of time outdoors. The stripe-like markings beneath her eyes are similar to the larger ones on her arms, back, and legs; however, if asked about them, Redd will just say they're tattoos meant to invoke animal spirits for grace and power. Despite this cover-up, she generally finds it easier to just hide the markings to begin with, and she consequently avoids wearing clothing that makes her body markings visible. The one on her neck is a little harder to hide beyond wearing a scarf or higher-necked cloak, the latter of which she prefers due to seeming more normal in warmer conditions. Although she sometimes has makeup to cover the markings on her face or to even make her face's skintone appear a little more normal-colored, she generally does not have the money to buy it regularly, and she tries to make do without for the sake of her wallet. While her long ears might not appear to be anything unusual to a non-elf, they are actually a bit longer than most elves' -- again, likely owing to her demonic bloodline. Her claw-like nails are usually hidden by gloves, as they grow back too quickly to effectively keep filed down. She also has sharp teeth, though an onlooker would likely have to be specifically watching her mouth to notice that her canines are more fang-like than they should be on a normal person. Being prone to laughter and not taking things seriously, Redd often has a smile on her face -- and when that smile becomes a little more lopsided and is accompanied by a slightly furrowed brow, that's a good indicator that Redd is up to no good. The most distinctive physical feature Redd has is the one she takes greatest care in hiding: her tiger-like tail. Though more flexible and somewhat prehensile in function than a true cat's tail, there's no denying the resemblance. She is extremely careful to not let her tail be seen under any circumstances, as it's essentially the one thing that's impossible to explain away, especially if taken in conjunction with the rest of her odd appearance. Most of the time, her tail is stuffed down one of her trousers' legs and strapped to her leg to keep it from moving too much, and she favors loose-fitting clothing primarily because it makes it easier to hide her tail. Personality "Devil may care" perhaps describes Redd very well. While she does plan things out to some degree and exercises caution when necessary, there's no denying that she tends to have an almost cheerily uncaring attitude towards everything around her. Her life is too long to spend it being miserable or worried. If this is the only life she gets, she's going to make the best of it. She goes where she feels like going, and if she feels like she needs money, she's most likely to just steal it in the moment she needs it as opposed to trying to save money in advance. Her planning is more short-term than long-term; if someone asked what she was going to do later that day, she'd be likely to have some sort of answer. Asking her what she'll probably be doing in a year is more likely to get a shrug and a non-commital response. Except in matters pertaining to herself, Redd is mostly honest and blunt, speaking straightforwardly and getting frustrated with people who won't just come out and say what they really mean. She doesn't always intend to give her opinion rudely, and she can actually sweet-talk her way out of trouble just as easily as she can lie, but her attitude tends to result in it coming across that way regardless. Unless she sees a very specific need to lie or be indirect, Redd will be honest. If someone doesn't like her honesty, that isn't her problem. All she was doing was saying the truth. Redd operates on what offers the most personal benefit. She thinks little of using people, especially if in her eyes, it's not anything that'll do lasting harm or cause bigger trouble for herself. Redd probably wouldn't steal from a high-profile noble or go after a unique artifact in a museum, but she wouldn't think much of filching a few coins from someone who clearly has a lot of money. She, however, probably wouldn't steal from someone that would be visibly hurt by such thievery -- why do lasting harm to someone who's already in a bad position? It's unlikely that she would go out of her way to help someone in such a position, but that doesn't mean she'll deliberately try to make their life worse. She has little patience for people who are excessively negative. Although she might be cynical about people in general, Redd hates it when people have practically contagious negativity. She'll likely tell them to stop dragging others down with them or to look on the brighter side of things. She may laugh or joke to lighten the mood, but if that doesn't work, Redd isn't afraid to be more firm about the need to just relax. After all, life can be so short. Nobody ever knows when they're going to die. Why waste time being miserable? Live a little, do reckless things -- you never know if you'll get another chance to do them. This attitude carries over into her general lifestyle as well; if Redd is nervous about something, she's likely to just shoulder through it or run away from it entirely rather than be paralyzed with indecision. She tries to make choices quickly and decisively. There's no point in regretting what's done. It's always time to keep moving forward. While Redd is not the best at handling animals herself, she adores animals of all sorts and is jealous of people who own any, especially if the animal is useful for something such as a sheep providing wool or a dog that's trained to guard a house. In particular, Redd is envious of Talon Crew and how they get to train and tend to all sorts of animals, as opposed to just the farm animals that she grew up around. However, she resents the idea of being tied down, especially to an organization. Even if she weren't a tiefling or if she were perfectly able to disguise everything unusual about her appearance without fear of discovery, Redd would still be unlikely to try and join Talon Crew. Having to obey rules and follow someone else's orders would get in the way of the kind of life she wants to have -- one of pure, unfettered freedom. Beneath the surface, Redd actually gets attached to others easily, particularly if she finds herself empathizing with them. Attachment, however, terrifies her, as she believes whatever she has, she'll eventually lose -- be it because the shorter-lived person died or because they came too close to finding out she's a tiefling. That hasn't stopped her from becoming fixated on Bronnwyr, as she never got to see most of the country prior to the cataclysms hitting it. As a result, she tends to feel immense nostalgia for it and life beyond the Flock even though, truth be told, Redd did not have much of a life beyond her family's farm for most of her childhood. She tends to romanticize particular memories or abstract notions, especially her own lifestyle. It may not be luxurious or prestigious to drift from country to country and to never have somewhere of her own, but it certainly has a unique appeal that she clings to. Background The youngest child born to a hard-working elven family in Bronnwyr over a hundred years ago, Redd Redthread initially had a fairly mundane upbringing -- though things became significantly more fraught when her tiefling heritage began to slowly manifest as she slowly grew, as if severely stunted by the longevity of her elven blood. When it became clear that Redd's altered physiology was only going to get more obvious as time went on, she had to learn how to hide her tiefling features. The ruddy-red skin could easily be explained away, as could some of the stripe-like markings on her arms and face. Birthmarks aren't impossible, after all, and in the right light, her red eyes seemed a bit more brown, especially if she grew out her hair to hang in her eyes more. Her nails could be regularly trimmed to avoid looking too much like claws, or she could just wear gloves. Wearing a hood could hide her longer-than-average ears, which weren't really incriminating alone, anyway. And her face seeming a bit feline-like, almost, could just be written off as a bizarre coincidence. It was the tail that was the problem. Resembling a tiger's tail but far more, for lack of a better term, dextrous than any feline tail ought to be, this tail essentially became the bane of Redd's existence. It dictated the kinds of clothes she could and could not wear. It meant that she could never forget that the tail had to remain secret, lest she accidentally emote with the tail from pure physical reflex. And most of all, it meant that absolutely nobody could see her as she really was. Keeping Redd out of sight from anyone not part of the family wasn't too difficult, but it also meant Redd got to see very little of Bronnwyr. Her entire world was an isolated farm, visits to anywhere beyond increasingly rare and always feeling fraught with the danger of being discovered. She hardly knew any of the neighbors – particularly since this meant she could go years without seeing any halfling neighbors her family had, finding that in what felt like a rather short time to her, some of the neighbors had already gone from being children to full adults who were looking to inherit the farms they grew up on. While at home, Redd helped around the farm as best she could, and she was often the one left behind to “hold down the fort” when everyone else had to go into town or visit a neighbor for whatever reason. Due to still being a child, there was little she could actually do beyond simple tasks such as feeding the livestock, but she still delighted in feeling “helpful,” and she made a game of the tasks she had to do. In particular, when no one was around, she practiced trying to hold things with her tail. She figured that if she could get good at it, she could become an even more efficient worker. After all, having an extra limb for doing farm work seemed particularly helpful, and if she was by herself, what would be the harm? The harm, it turned out, was an unexpected visit from a neighbor. Lexie Fairfield, who was apparently the daughter of a neighbor that Redd had thought was still a child himself, stumbled on Redd trying to lift a basket of chicken feed with her tail. Although Redd did her best to lie and explain away what Lexie had seen, the damage was done, and several other Fairfields visited Redd's family the next day. While, of course, they were appalled that the Rosethreads' daughter was actually some sort of a monster, they agreed to keep it secret – if the Rosethreads made it beneficial for them. Initially, the Fairfields were kept quiet with giving them livestock and crop yields, but it became too much of a financial strain on the family, particularly as the Fairfields' demands grew more and more outrageous, and a compromise was made when Redd was eighty-seven. Redd was always a hard worker. Surely instead of taking almost everything the Rosethreads had, they would be appeased with someone who could work to make their own farm a prosperous one? The Fairfields agreed, and Redd ended up living on the Fairfield farm for eleven years. The official “contract” was just that Redd would be a worker, though it soon became apparent that this was just under the table slavery. Like it had been when she was back home, Redd saw little of the outside world, but this time also had the threat of her family losing everything if people found out they had a monster for a daughter. They might even have to evacuate the country entirely, leaving behind everything they had. Terrified for her family and also for her own safety, Redd kept quiet and did as she was told, but she grew more and more resentful as time went on, especially towards her own family for putting her in this situation to begin with and leaving her alone. Unbeknownst to her, her family was barred from visiting her at all at the Fairfields' farm, and they had in fact been trying to put together enough funds to reclaim Redd's freedom and buy the Fairfields' silence for good. But to Redd, who was unaware of the specifics of the arrangement, there was only a feeling of being abandoned to her fate. That fate, it turned out, changed when Bronnwyr was invaded by hellspawn. The Fairfields fled the first opportunity they had, and Redd made it seem like she had been "lost" in the chaos, expecting that the Fairfields wouldn't care about keeping track of her when their lives were at stake. At first, she considered trying to return home, but she recalled what kinds of monsters she had heard the Fairfields talking about when discussing what was going on -- some of them were almost feline in appearance in addition to possessing humanoid qualities. Now even more certain that this had just been part of her family's plan to get rid of a daughter who had just been a burden on them, Redd just hid away in the abandoned Fairfield farm and intended to wait out the attack – or maybe see for herself what these monsters were like. Perhaps if they found her, she would have a place where she wouldn't be the odd one out. Instead, a group of elven volunteers from the Flock found her. Recognizing her as just a child, they coaxed her into going with them to safety – aboard a giant eagle in the sky. However, on hearing that this "Flock" was where everyone in Bronnwyr was being evacuated to, and remembering what had happened before, Redd, not even an adult at the age of ninety-eight, made herself lost again at the first opportunity she had aboard the Flock. She was certain that if anyone found out what she was, she would just be thrown into another situation like she had been before the hellspawn invasion – or even worse, someone might find her again and send her back to the Fairfield family. The only solution, then, was to just rely on herself. Eventually she would outlive the Fairfields, people would forget about her entirely, and that would be that. Maybe she could even settle down somewhere once enough time had passed and everyone who conceivably could have known about her would be dead. As a sort of means of marking this new time in her life where she would be her own person and live on her own terms, and to also emotionally distance herself from the family she perceived as abandoning her, Redd changed her third name to "Rachertinatus" – a heavily-Vanian word that meant, essentially, "persistent spirit". Redd became quite good at disguising herself and preying on people's sympathy, at first tricking people into goodwill with her youthful appearance and status as a recent refugee. She went from home to home as an orphan in need and would vanish in the night after filching a few coins or things that “they wouldn't miss”. As she grew older, she spent more time on the streets and in shady dealings to take advantage of her skill for less than legal activity. Because she purposefully kept her thieving to small-time operations to avoid drawing attention to herself, she soon mastered the art of making a small amount of money and food last a long time. She drifted from country to country, never staying in one place for too long. She tended to spend more time among shorter-lived races, aware that “fellow” elves were more likely to recognize her harder-to-disguise features as a bit unusual. In the process, Redd developed a sort of sentiment that people weren't worth knowing beyond what they could personally benefit her. She could run into someone she knew from ten years ago and still remain mostly the same while they went from a child to adult. What was the point of getting to know people when they changed too fast for her to keep up, and when the people who didn't change too fast were too risky to stay around for extended periods of time? When Redd heard about the impending Descent into Hackledown over twenty years later, she found herself intrigued. Here was an opportunity for money unlike anything else she might get just from larceny. Nobody would miss something that was just grabbed during an invasion, so she could go for more expensive and valuable things. Perhaps she would even acquire enough money that she could live luxuriously and easily for a time. It seemed unlikely, but she had made it this far, so maybe her luck would turn around in Hackledown. Though she didn't want to admit it, part of her wanted to see a "real country" before it was entirely lost to the invasion. Perhaps seeing Hackledown (and not realizing just what exactly the state of a country in the midst of a Descent would be) would dampen the nostalgia for the Bronnwyr she had never known. The very first day of the Descent, Redd made her way to a platform as a volunteer – her tiefling features disguised as best she could manage and sure that this would be exactly the kind of new start she needed. However, Redd wasn't able to find anything worthwhile in Hackledown in the short time she was there, and she ended up returning to the Flock after the sight of the ruined country brought back unwanted memories of Bronnwyr aflame and being torn apart by hellspawn. She quickly wrote it off as a loss and something she shouldn't have bothered with at all, returning to her minor larceny gig while everyone's eyes were on Hackledown. Catalyst A few weeks after the Hackledown Descent concluded, Redd eventually found her way to Alcazar out of curiosity, having heard about the new Whitefire invention that would supposedly supply a critical edge in the war against the hellspawn. Though she mostly intended to pickpocket the crowd there and not pay much attention to the announcement itself, she found that things were too crowded to easily make off with someone's valuables without their noticing -- not at all helped by the arrival of Mara Mozena, Vagrant Gnosis, and Tara Songflower... or the discovery that the Whitefire device evidently worked opposite to its promoted function, giving the hellspawn it "scanned" information on how to kill the device's user rather than the other way around. Redd quickly judged that Gnosis knew another tiefling based on some of his comments to Mara, and she made a comment to the effect of this device being bad news for "certain people". His response further confirmed his lack of hostility towards tieflings, and Redd, figuring she would never see these people again and that they might want to at least be aware of the situation, snuck a note into Mara's bag explaining what she had just discovered about the Whitefire device. To ensure Mara would at least look for the note and hopefully read it, Redd bluffed that it was her address, should Mara ever want to "see her again". With the situation now out of her hands, Redd departed for somewhere easier to steal from. Miscellany Redd's birthday is Aut31. Image Gallery redd.png Category:Flock Category:Player Characters